Susquehanna Twp. science students learn in the field

For one week, Katie Vellios strapped on waders and spent her mornings collecting water samples from streams and wetlands. In the afternoons, she tested water quality in a laboratory. Her future career, she now knows, will probably focus on laboratory sciences.

View full sizeProvided photoSusquehanna Township students Saul Kester, Long Tran, Anna Ellis, DIana Pry and Monica Feeley learn about environmental science and biology studies at Juniata College Raystown Field Station.

“I think I prefer the lab more than the field,” Vellios said. “This whole nature thing isn’t my style, but it should make me appreciate it more than I did before.”

During the second week of July, 16 rising sophomores from Susquehanna Twp. High School immersed themselves in environmental science and biology studies at Juniata College Raystown Field Station.

The Penn State College of Medicine administered the program as part of a five-year, $1.3 million Science Education Partnership Award grant from the National Institutes of Health, plus a grant from the state Department of Environmental Protection.

The camp marked the first of three years that researchers from Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center will advise Susquehanna Twp. High School teachers on science education. The researchers have already begun working with Middletown, East Pennsboro, Steelton-Highspire and SciTech high schools, but this summer was the first time that experiential efforts moved from a laboratory to the outdoors, said Dr. Robert Bonneau, professor of microbiology and immunology and pediatrics at Hershey Medical Center.

The Susquehanna Twp. students — eight girls and eight boys — studied the impact of humans on the environment and the impact of the environment on human health.

“Our underlying theme was water,” Bonneau said. “Our focus was, what is the life that is going on in the water? What creatures are there? What type of minerals? What type of pollutants? It was a very, very busy five days.”

Kathy Jones, Juniata College associate professor of education, helped bring the students to the 365-acre Raystown Lake preserve, leased from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers by Juniata College for environmental education. Mornings were spent in the field under the tutelage of Juniata College professors — collecting water samples and cataloging fish and bugs that signal water health. They also learned about the construction of wetlands and dams at the man-made Raystown Lake.

“If we really want the high-quality STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] students and get them interested in different fields, we need to have them out in the field to see that science can be so much more than textbook information,” Jones said. “Not every scientist is wearing a white lab coat every day.”

In the afternoons, student analyzed the samples in the field station’s laboratory with help from their teachers and the medical center’s researchers. Student Jaquan Blair, who hopes to be a mechanical engineer or dissolved oxygen researcher, said he learned techniques that college students use.

“They taught us how to be careful in labs, because the little mistakes could affect the results,” he said. “And you have to take good notes.”

Teachers got to “recharge their batteries,” and students will become better consumers when making decisions on purchasing cars, household products, and other items that impact the environment, said Susquehanna Twp. biology and environmental science teacher Rob McDonald.

Students learned that scientific disciplines are interconnected, said Kyle Lorditch, Susquehanna Twp. biology and environmental science teacher. Some students were naturals in the lab, and others were first to volunteer for the “really dirty, sweaty field work.”

“As future scientists, they’ll have to wear many hats,” Lorditch said. “They’ll have to be experts in many things. At the same time, they’ll find their niche.”

Even students who don’t become scientists will need scientific literacy to “understand what a carcinogen is, what a wetland is, what a heavy metal is,” Bonneau said.

“Science surrounds us every day,” he said.

Vellios said she has always been interested in science, and she will take honors and AP science classes through her senior year. Her science career will probably focus on the kind of laboratory work she did at Raystown.

“It made you feel like you were working toward your final results, like you were a real scientist,” she said. “It put you in their shoes.”

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